Spies, Lies, and Friendship
by MarbleGlove
Summary: Nick Fury and Phil Coulson are friends as well as coworkers. A series of related scenes and character studies
1. On the way to the wake

_Summary: related single scenes and character studies of friendships with and between the SHIELD agents_

* * *

 **On the way to the wake**

* * *

"I'm sorry, Nick."

"I'm not."

Phil was dressed and sitting on the edge of his hospital bed, ready to be released today. He was officially dead but these types of extremely close calls were always opportunities to slip someone out of the records.

It was useful.

"You got the short end of the stick on this one," Phil said.

"That was always in the cards." Nick shrugged.

While Phil would walk free today, Nick would head out to Phil's wake. "You just helped me make it work. I'm sorry you won't get to hang around your Captain America anymore."

"Me too." Phil looked at Fury dead on. "I am completely in awe of Steve Rogers: he is just, amazing. And I have to admit that I'm a bit jealous of the world he lives in, with good guys and bad guys so clearly defined. But it's not the world I live in, and it's not the world you live in either. And, Nick, in the real world, with all its complexities, you're Captain America."

Nick grimaced. "Stop, you're going to make me blush." He spoke dryly, but mostly to hide the fact that it was true. "It's not my wake today."

Phil smiled in understanding, but continued anyway. "You made your way against impossible odds to immense power and you did it to defend what is right."

"I've had to make some pretty serious compromises on the way."

Phil shrugged. "Everything is tainted. If you burn to the ground everything that's not perfectly pure, then we wouldn't have anything left to defend. Let he who is without sin and all that."

"And people think you're rule abiding." Nick shook his head.

Phil raised his eyebrows. "And people think you're not."

They looked like a mismatched pair. The big black guy in a long leather coat and the balding white guy in his government suits.

Most people never understood how their working relationship worked much less their personal friendship.

Fury, after all, had a reputation as a devious and vicious maverick. Coulson had a reputation for being kind but rule-abiding. It wasn't just rumor, either. Their acquaintances experienced them like that. What few people seemed to think through was the fact that they both had wildly successful careers in military intelligence.

They had more similarities than differences, and where they differed, it was often in opposition to how they were perceived.

"You're the idealist in this relationship, Nick. You took an idea I enjoyed as a fun fantasy and turned it into a reality."

"I enjoy doing the impossible."

"And you do with aplomb."

"Anything you want me to say to the Avengers?"

Phil paused to consider, but then shook his head. "Say whatever seems appropriate to keep them on track. They're so smart, and yet so very dumb."

Nick snorted a huff of laughter. "Yeah."

"They think you're a natural liar and I'm an honest man. For the head of an intelligence agency, you're amazingly bad at lying."

"Everyone expects me to lie, so there's really no point."

"Whereas everyone expects me to be honest, so I can get away with virtually anything."

"Yeah."

Nick had been seen as big and vicious and dangerous since he hit puberty. He had realized early on that there wasn't much point in trying to change anyone's mind on that, because they would see him, a big black guy and think he was dangerous no matter what. He went with it. He joined the military at eighteen.

Phil was always seen as the boy next door: polite and kind and honest. He didn't mind the perception, it certain let him get away with a lot more than anyone else could, but he alternated between wishing that he truly was what everyone thought and wishing that everyone would just see him for who he really was. He joined the military because surely there they judged based on actions rather than appearances.

The thing, though, was that while they were both dangerous, it was Nick who was the kinder and more straight-forward person. When Nick had a secret, he often flat out told you that he knew something and wasn't going to tell you. Of course he lied sometimes; he lied often, in fact; but only when necessary. Whenever he could, he was honest. Even in his dress, he wore all black and a long black leather trench coat that practically screamed "secret badass" and mostly made all the other spies in their bland business-wear nervous by being so obvious and eye-catching.

It was Phil who was the more devious and ruthless, the more casually manipulative, who lied with casual ease because no one believed the truth anyway. No one except Nick, who had looked at him and seen a valuable weapon in his arsenal and recruited him into SHEILD.

"Well, go forth and don't speak ill of the dead."

"Hmm, I'll have to think of some extra embarrassing stories to tell."

"If you do, take pictures of their faces."

"Of course. Keep me updated on life from the dead side of things."

"Of course."

And it was time to go. They clasped hands for a moment, but then left the room together, before turning each in their own direction.

Neither of them would let a simple death keep them from doing what needed to be done.


	2. Method to the Madness

_Summary: Barton brings Natasha in to SHIELD and Coulson is prepared to receive her_

* * *

 **Method to the Madness**

* * *

Agent Coulson was a sticker for the rules. Everyone knew that. He had the agents' manual memorized. He could, and would, recite exactly what rules you had broken, what procedures you had foregone, and write you up for every single one of them.

If Clint had gone by the reputation alone, he would have hated Agent Coulson. Clint knew he thought outside the box most of the time, to the extent that he wasn't entirely sure what the box even was. Rule-bound people hated him and he generally hated them in return.

But he'd also learned to do his own reconnaissance. Which was a good thing because while everyone said that Agent Coulson was a sticker for the rules, they should have been saying that he was deeply knowledgeable of the guidelines. He really had memorized the manual, but only because he knew the stories behind each one of the rules. He knew the blood, sweat, and tear, as well as the statistics and probabilities, that went into writing those rules. He knew when to apply them and when to risk it all.

In the great game that was the international intelligence field, he was a card shark who absolutely counted cards. He was the best manager Clint could even imagine having.

Coulson was the reason that Clint knew that for most reports, he needed to type them up or at least use a black or blue pen on white paper and print his reports because they'd be copied and OCR'd. But for the eyes-only stuff that would be kept in hardcopy in an environmentally sealed safe, he could write his reports in crayon for all Phil cared. Phil had even provided the crayons.

The real secrets got written with the yellow crayon.

No one was going to scan or OCR those. No one was going to do it legally in-house for security purposes and no one was going to sneak in and do it secretly for the enemy because it was a report written in fucking crayon.

It was an added level of security.

It was also an amusing way to relax after what was generally some pretty horrific missions.

Clint looked forward to introducing it to the Black Widow.

"So, did you get it?" Clint didn't wait for a response before looking around Phil's office and seeing the shopping back from an upscale art supply store. "Nice! Thanks!"

"Do remember that I'm not your personal shopper."

"Sure thing!" Clint grinned, not meaning a word of it.

"Anyway, I assigned it to a probationary agent."

"Ah…" Clint said. "Assigned?"

"Mm-hmm. I gave him the name and address and told him to go buy the second most expensive art kit for adults. And then report back."

"What did he report?" Clint found himself morbidly curious. It was like a train wreck. Clint could see it all in his mind's eye. A bright young agent told he had a mission by a senior agent: to go in (undercover!) to a strange business (case the joint!) and purchase a specific type of item (send secret a message!), and then report their observations… There's no way that bright young agent was going to report not seeing anything shady.

"You get to be the one who will go back to the supply store within the next month or so to confirm that it is not a terrorist cell, drug cartel, and/or hub of human trafficking."

"Yes, sir." Clint rather thought he would take Natasha with him on that reconnaissance mission. She'd smiled at him before, but he was still searching for a way to make her laugh.

At least the art kit was a pretty good one. Pencils, pastels, even water colors.

"No crayons?"

"Those I pick up at the gas station." Phil tossed him a box.

Natasha had looked at him like he was insane.

But she'd also spent hours spreading ink like blood on page after page, of her Red Room debrief, full of blue prints and portraits and horrors too strong for words. The in-house psychologist had wandered by to drop off some cookies for them both. Director Fury had stopped by and complemented the brush strokes even as he was clearly memorizing the faces.

Clint kept himself busy first drawing out his own report of the assassination mission turned rescue mission and then just drawing ideas for future missions.

By the time Natasha was finally done, she'd used up a good portion of the paints in the kit and she looked washed out herself. But washed out in a good way: like some amount of the pain and torment had drained away.

She'd still looked uncertain when she gathered up the pictures at Clint's direction and followed him into Coulson's office.

Coulson nodded his approval of the reports and handed Natasha a copy of the agents' manual. "I don't expect you'll be getting many missions that are standard enough to require the manual, Ms. Romanova, but it's a useful resource to have nonetheless. It can be a source of structure if you let it."

Natasha had accepted the rulebook like a lifeline. Like something that could tell her what to do now that her whole world had been changed. "Thank you."

And Clint thought, yeah: he didn't like people who used rules to confine and bind, but he could definitely appreciate people who used them as a map to the madness they all dealt with in this mad, bad world.


	3. Storm in a Teacup

_Summary: Nick Fury stops by to update Bruce Banner on the events of Civil War_

* * *

 **Storm in a Teacup**

* * *

Nick Fury was making tea in the kitchen when Bruce Banner got home. It took some effort to forego the obvious comment of reports of the man's death having been exaggerated. Just the thought of it, though, made him miss Tony.

He pushed that thought aside and stuck to the more important question, "Are you here to bring me in?"

"Do you want to go in?" Ex-Director Fury looked only mildly interested in Bruce, despite sitting in Bruce's crappy one-room apartment, drinking Bruce's tea out of a mug that was decidedly not Bruce's.

Did the man really come with his own mug to break into Bruce's apartment?

At least that left Bruce's own, lone mug still available for him to use.

"Not really, no," Bruce finally answered after he had his own tea and could sit on the bed facing the chair that Fury was in.

"Good. Because I'm actually here to ask you to stay away."

"And now I'm suddenly wondering if maybe I should go in after all."

Nick Fury had a remarkably attractive grin, Banner found himself noting. It was a flash of strong white teeth against his dark skin and had real humor to it.

"That's the problem with working with smart people. You have to question everything."

"Except when they don't question nearly enough. Case in point: the Avengers are being blamed for a suicide bomber they failed to stop?"

Fury shrugged. "They did make it worse than it would have been."

"Are there no Good Samaritan laws in Nigeria?"

"Not in this case. Would you expect them to apply to foreign-national vigilantes? Why you all decided it was a good idea to make yourselves a celebrity group and publically acknowledged organization is beyond me."

Bruce sighed. "Tony made it seem like a good idea."

"He does seem to have that ability. And with me and Coulson both dead, there's no one able or willing to try to hold him back."

Bruce considered asking whether Coulson was actually dead like Bruce had assumed right up until now or dead like Fury was dead. But upon consideration, that knowledge wouldn't change anything and couldn't be relied on anyway. So he let it go.

"So, why are you here, again? I assume it wasn't just to ask me not to do something I didn't have plans to do anyway."

And there was that smile again. Bruce busied himself with making his own cup of tea.

"I'm here to keep you informed on the current state of affairs."

"Really?"

"Really."

"I do have access to the news."

"The media is a tool - a valuable tool that is often used for the betterment of humanity, but still just a tool. And it's currently being wielded quite skillfully. Which implies to me that General Ross is not the one doing the wielding, even if he is involved."

"General Ross is around?"

"Oh yes. And blaming the Avengers for losing track of you, too."

"Oh god. That's, I don't even know how to respond to that."

"Personally, I'm impressed. He's a shit strategist, but he's a pretty amazing politician to still be in the position of power he's in."

Banner laughed. It was that or cry or rage, and the other two weren't great options right now.

"So who is wielding it?"

"I'm not sure yet. There are a lot of possibilities. And Stark has been pulling a lot of strings recently to prevent Ultron from being tracked back to him and the Avengers."

"It wasn't the Avengers who made it. It was just him and me."

"Ultron was made under the auspices of the Avengers. If there'd been a proper investigation, then maybe Captain America could have disavowed responsibility and it would have been Stark's and your problem."

"Steve wouldn't have done that."

"No, he wouldn't. He didn't have anything to do with Ultron, but Steve Rogers wouldn't abandon anyone on his team. You and I know it. Stark, however, doesn't."

"He thinks it's his responsibility."

"He thinks it's his responsibility," Fury agreed. "And he didn't want anyone to know that there were repercussions, so he hid those repercussions from the rest of the team. And that has put him firmly under the thumb of one General Thaddeus Ross."

"You think Tony would turn me in if I went to him now? Are you trying to make me angry?"

"No, I'm trying to make you safe. I've worked in the intelligence field for my entire adult life. I can tell you that blackmail is the easiest method of coercion out there, more successful than either threats or bribes. Find a man ashamed of himself, and you've found a man you can change into someone else."

Bruce really didn't want to think of Thaddeus Ross changing Tony into someone he wasn't.

"Why are you telling me all of this? It's not to keep me safe."

"It's also to keep you safe."

"But primarily…?"

"To keep the world safe. And the world needs the Avengers. And the Avengers need someone they trust to know what's going on. Not right now, but later, when they pull themselves together and come to you to confess. You need to know enough to keep them honest."

"Okay. So what do I need to know?"

"Stark having issues is once more the big news. But I also thought I'd bring you a copy of this."

This was apparently a two-inch thick government document of some type that Bruce was fairly sure he did not want to get a copy of. He made no move to take it and Fury tossed it onto the table where it landed with a thud.

"What is that?"

"That is a notarized copy of the Sokovia Accords."

"And why would I want a copy of that?"

"You should see what's in it. And maybe keep an eye on what's not."

Bruce finally pulled it towards himself, but kept his eyes on Fury. "Why don't you summarize it for me." It wasn't a question.

"Sure: some group of idiots were given a bunch of busy work and that's the results. It doesn't do anything, and every nation that voted for it knows that perfectly well."

Bruce blinked at that. "Huh. I guess that makes sense of how they got international agreement so fast."

Fury grimaced in agreement. "Yeah. There are detailed descriptions that go on ad nauseum about what exactly constituted an enhanced individual, the lines between enhanced prosthetics and regular prosthetics, and between someone naturally falling on the high end of human standard abilities versus enhanced."

"What does it conclude?" Bruce asked with morbid curiosity. People had spent decades arguing about which people were disabled and which were differently-abled and what that distinction even meant. Now a multi-government body was going to throw super-abled into the mix and come up with a definitive answer?

"It depends entirely on what paragraph you happen to be reading at the moment."

Bruce closed his eyes for a moment through sheer second-hand embarrassment for whoever had to have their name connected to this. "I should have expected that."

Fury was grinning again when Bruce opened his eyes. "And that's not even getting to the question of registration and oversight."

Bruce groaned. "And how about enforcement?"

"Extremely vague and remarkably brief. And no budget."

"So why exactly does anyone care about it at all?"

"The one real danger is that it is so vague. Any country, or potentially even a suitably wealthy individual, could implement pretty much any enforcement policy they could afford."

"That's not nothing."

The look Fury gave him was deeply judgmental. "They are entering foreign nations while either carrying of being weapons of mass destruction. The United Nations is not going to protect every overpowered individual who decides they know better than the various ruling governments."

Bruce had to acknowledge that Fury had a point.

Fury must have seen it on his face too, because he stood abruptly and announced, "Well, I'm off. Have a good rest of your day, Doctor."


	4. Coulson's Wake

_Summary: The Avengers and Nick Fury hold a wake for Coulson in which drinks are drunk and stories are told_

* * *

 **Coulson's Wake**

* * *

Fury slammed his hands down on the table, making the whole table shake. "Fuck you all, shut up, you damned mother fuckers. It damned well wasn't a god damned hero's death!"

The Avengers gaped at the director.

Captain America rose from his seat. He had been Steve before, but now he was definitely Captain America glaring and speaking in a frosty voice, "Excuse me?"

Director Fury glared right back. "Fuck. You. Coulson died. The least you could do is fucking see who he was. He died a fucking martyr, not a hero. Saint him if you want, I sure as hell would believe he could damn well tell God what to fucking do, but if you want to fucking honor him, then the least you can fucking do is see who he goddamn was."

Even Steve looked taken aback, completely losing his Captain America façade. The other Avengers looked uneasily at each other. "Er, what?"

"He was a fucking hero the whole god damn time he fucking worked for SHIELD with his god damned checklists and files and shit. He fucking saved more goddamned people than any of you fuckers and you never fucking noticed. And now you want to honor him for being a dumb motherfucker who martyred himself to buy a few extra seconds that didn't even fucking matter."

There was a resounding silence that was not helped at all by the awkward tinkling piano music playing quietly on the sound system.

It was Thor would finally broke the silence. "Aye, Nicholas Fury is right. It was a heroic death, but not a hero's death. His death did not save any lives or accomplish any great deeds. Instead, he died a martyr, standing for what he believed in. And his death accomplished what a martyr's death does: it shone a light on a desperate need. It is to my shame that I needed that death to show me the way. Though Philip, the Son of Coul, may have died a martyr, he did not die in vain. Tell us then, Nicholas Fury, of the heroic Philip Coulson I failed to see."

Fury seemed to relax a bit. "Phil wasn't the picture perfect hero because he was always more careful. He never threw himself into impossible situations and won against impossible odds through crazy acts of bravery. Instead, he would analyze situations, makes sure he knows what the odds were and went after his goals in ways that minimized the risk to himself and his team while optimizing the danger to his enemies."

Barton laughed, and added, "His lists! Oh my god, he made so many lists! He said they were helpful and they must have been because he was a stickler for details and he always knew exactly what was going on." He paused a moment. "I'm going to seriously miss his lists."

Banner blinked. "Huh. There's a whole manifesto on the importance of lists for doctors. It makes sense that it's important for secret agents too."

"Nat and I, we worked with Coulson a lot. But it was almost never for assassinations. We're good at those, the best at them, but Coulson didn't really care for the approach."

"He thought it lacked elegance."

"It was weird. He'd use us, push us to our limits and beyond, but for all the lists, we were never just single-purpose tools like we sometimes were with other handlers. I don't know why we had him so often, but I appreciated it."

"It was on purpose."

"What?"

"Coulson wanted to teach us ways to get rid of annoyances other than assassination."

"But he never taught us anything."

"Didn't he?"

"… Yeah, I guess he did."

"His missions almost always ran smoothly. For a while I thought he was babying me, but he wasn't. He was just always prepared and he made sure we were prepared too."

Fury nodded. "Before he joined SHEILD his missions went so smoothly that he got a reputation for being protected by someone on high and only being given the easy missions. No one seemed to notice that they wouldn't have been easy missions if they had been given to anyone else. His last commanding officer apparently thought he was so protected that his death in the field would make a good political point."

"What?" Barton said, his voice cold as death. Barton might have worked on a variety of missions, especially under Coulson, but he'd first made his reputation as an assassin.

Natasha only shifted her position, but she was clearly on point and waiting for action.

Fury grimaced. "I think what offended Phil the most was that it wouldn't have even worked at that point."

"Heh," Barton consciously relaxed and took another swig of beer.

Fury continued. "No one important was paying attention to him then. But that was how he joined SHIELD. He got a dishonorable discharge for disobeying a direct order and I recruited him immediately after."

"WHAT?" Tony said.

Fury gave him a pointed look. "You didn't research him?"

"No, I didn't." Tony wanted to claim it was a matter of respecting the man's privacy. But he'd honestly just never considered Agent Coulson as anyone other than Agent Coulson of SHIELD. What was there to research?

Then he reached over to smack Barton on the back, where he was still trying to cough up the beer he'd choked on.

"The commanding officer was an idiot who hadn't done his due diligence to figure out that Phil wasn't related anyone of any particular importance. I think that pissed him off just as much as the half-assed assassination attempt."

"Hmm," Natasha said again, like she was contemplating whether Phil's apparently tepid respond to it all changed her plan to track down and eviscerate the commanding officer, but was inclined to think not.

"I told him he'd better obey my orders or I wouldn't charge him with anything, I'd just kill him myself. He said, he'd obey all of my good orders, so I'd better make sure not to give him stupid ones. I figured that was fair. But he avoided wearing uniforms after that."

"I once asked him why he always wore suits," Natasha volunteered.

"What did he say?"

"He said it was part of his fake-it-till-he-makes-it plan to be a proper government agent."

Tony couldn't stop the snort of laughter at that. "But why was he still wearing suits? Had he become addicted? No longer owned any jeans?"

"No, he was still faking it. He spent his days asking people to tell him what was going on or waiting around to see what was happening and yet somehow he'd gotten this reputation for knowing everything. The more awesome his reputation got the more he wondered when someone was going to catch on that he wasn't that person. He was just a comic book nerd who'd signed up with the military to get out of his small rural town."

Tony stared. "What the…?" Tony had those thoughts, with everyone always calling himself a genius even when he knew he was so spectacularly dumb, but Agent? Agent had been the real deal. There was no way he should have doubted himself.

It took a lot of drinking to get through that night, and they were all mostly drunk by the end of it. At the end of the night, as Fury was preparing to depart and Thor was the only one still mostly sober, Thor bid him safe travels. "I think you are a man of wisdom, like my father, who knows much but also knows the power of words unspoken. It is a wisdom that still eludes me at times, but a valuable skill indeed. Safe travels, my friend, and good hunting."


	5. Mr Fury and Darcy Lee

_Summary: Nick Fury and Darcy Lewis catch up with each other and Tony Stark is dismayed to discover that he has been lied to_

* * *

 **Mr. Fury and Darcy-Lee**

* * *

"Hey, Mr. Fury, it's good to see you again."

"Hey yourself, Darcy-Lee. It's good to see you too. What have you gotten up to?"

"Sadly not going to Asgard," Darcy pouted. "But! Thor apologized for leaving me behind when he took Jane to Asgard because apparently it wasn't appropriate. I think the Asgardian master of protocol or their equivalent took him to task for it."

Tony Stark gaped. "You," he pointed his finger at first one and then the other, "but, how? Why?"

How did they know each other? Why did they know each other?

Darcy looked at him like he was slow, which was not something he was used to. "I'm Dr. Foster's assistant? Dr. Foster who made the Einstein-Rosen bridge? Who also off-and-on dates an alien god king? So I'm like her entourage and lady in waiting and everything. It's all _very_ fancy."

"Fancy like _not_ going to Asgard?" Fury teased.

Tony let that settle in his head for a moment: Fury. Teased.

Darcy didn't even hesitate though. "Oh my god, let me have my fantasies! I have spent so much time crunching numbers and analyzing spreadsheets and the super computer in Stark Tower is amazingly slow for what it is."

"Hey!" Tony said, insulted. And also ignored.

"I mean, it's also hosting a working AI, so I guess it makes sense that the processing power is mostly monopolized, but I still expected more. But from the look in Jane's eyes, she's getting antsy to grab some more data while the numbers continue to crunch. I suppose I can't ask about what you've been up to?"

"Well, I'm still dead," Fury grinned, and Tony wanted to gouge his eyes out because what was even going on, this was not reality. "But someone else isn't so dead, and I came to watch the fireworks."

"And hopefully help with the resulting fires." Phil Coulson said dryly.

Tony gaped some more, before pulling himself together and saying with rare sternness, "What is going on?"

He used that voice rarely enough that it usually got immediate responses. He was too powerful—politically, financially, and physically—for people to ignore when he was being serious.

Unfortunately, this time was an exception.

"Oh. Hey, secret agent man. I take it reports of your death were greatly exaggerated? You had a kickass wake."

And that just drove the point home, didn't it, Tony thought. He'd held a wake for Phil Coulson! And it had all been a lie?

"You lied to us! You went to that wake and chewed us out for how we treated Phil, and he wasn't even dead?"

Coulson raised an eyebrow and turned to Fury. "You chewed them out at my wake?"

Fury shrugged, "They were being remarkably twee."

"I can't believe you just used the word 'twee'."

"I, on the other hand, am very impressed that you used it correctly. Go you, Mr. Fury."

"Thank you, Darcy Lee."

Darcy beamed.

Fury looked indulgent.

Coulson looked stoic.

And Tony was still seriously annoyed and wasn't even sure whether he was supposed to be annoyed or not. Coulson had at least kept part of his attention on Tony.

"Am I just expected to ignore the fact that you lied to us? That you faked your death?"

"That is entirely up to you, Mr. Stark," Coulson said in his bland government-man voice.

Darcy interrupted to exclaim, "Wait, you're upset because the head of a multi-national espionage agency lied to you?" She looked incredulous.

Tony shifted, unaccountably uncomfortable. "He lied to all of us."

"What do you think espionage consists of? Hint: it's not telling everyone the complete truth."

"That's not the point!"

"Actually, it kind of is the point. Did you think you were the exception, the one he told the whole truth to?"

"No, of course not."

"You did! You really thought you were a unique little snowflake and got the whole truth from a spy agency! That's amazing!" and Darcy was decidedly laughing at him.

"I hacked his records and they said Coulson had died!"

"Uh-huh. And I bet Mr. Fury really reamed you out, too. Probably said something like," and here she deepened her voice, "Stop hacking _all of our records_ , Mr. Stark. It's terrible that you have access to _all of our records_. Terrible, I say!" By the end, her voice had reverted back to her regular pitch, except with even more laughter.

"That's not… I mean, that's… He lied!"

"Duh."

"Hey!"

"It's really kind of sweet of you? I mean, also super gullible. How can you have as much money as you have and still expect everyone to be honest with you?"


	6. All Speak

_Summary: Fury contemplates what it means that Thor speaks "All Speak"_

* * *

 **All Speak**

* * *

When Thor described to Fury the way he traveled between realms, he had spoken in vague descriptions and metaphors. Even when in the recordings they had of Thor's conversations with Dr. Jane Foster, the descriptions had been vague, more inspirational than actually useful. And yet, Foster had been entranced.

Some of his SHEILD analysts had dismissed her as merely infatuated with a good-looking man. She was considered a crackpot who just happened to stumble across something real. The general consensus had been that she just didn't have that much of a personality so there wasn't much point in spending too much time analyzing her motives and thoughts… especially when they differed from that of the analysts.

Times like that were when Fury thought SHEILD needed to be destroyed for being too stupid to survive rather than just for the Hydra infiltration.

Thor spoke something called All Speak.

Fury had tested it by sending various agents Thor's way to speak to him in different languages. They all reported back that Thor never even paused. He didn't appear to even notice that language changes, but his own response was always in whatever language the agent used. Even when the agent was switching from language to language. Even in recordings, Thor's conversation was always comprehensible to any listener.

What was particularly interesting was how the nuances changed based on the background knowledge of the user. Every agent had trouble actually transcribing the conversation into specific words but when forced to do so, they wrote slightly different things. When one agent heard Thor reference the Bifrost Bridge, agent with some basic physics knowledge heard "Einstein-Rosen Bridge", an agent with more linguistics experience heard "Rainbow Bridge" and another who liked science fiction perhaps a bit too much heard "wormhole."

It all made Fury wonder: what did Dr. Jane Foster, a genius who lived and breathed astrophysics and quantum physics to the near exclusion of all else, hear when Thor spoke to her?


End file.
